2012 was the best year in the firm's history. Strategic
Discipline's focus on priorities, meetings and metrics made a significant
the difference in our ability to achieve our targets.

Scott Ford, Cornerstone Wealth Management Group ~
Hagerstown, MD

The difference we've seen compared to other business
development processes within a very short period of time, in some cases
within days or even hours is you end up with actual work product,
deliverable plans and agendas that help.

Scott Bennett, Nations Financial Group ~ Cedar
Rapids, IA

Doug's Four Decisions Workshop has allowed our company
to focus on our top priorities for the year. With the use of the 1 page
strategic plan, company and individual dashboards we are better able to
track performance and measure results. For the first time we have a clear
company goal with everyone working towards that common goal. We are
extremely excited to continue working with Doug in the future.

Daily Huddles are by far the best thing we've learned.
Lots of our operations decisions have been made through the use of the daily
huddle process. Having four daily huddles each day is a pain, yet it's the
most productive and best thing that's happened to me as a manager.

Burges Kerawalla ~ Autopia Car Wash, Fremont, CA

Just wanted to let you know our first Supper Huddle
was a huge success!! Your help certainly was beneficial in its success!!
Thanks again for all of your help!!!.

Tyna, Charge Team ~ JPMA

In 2013, in addition to growing sales dollars and
market share, we cut our return beer rate (ROR) by over 35%. Nearly $600,000
less beer was double handled and brought back to the warehouse by your
efforts. This improvement drove the revenue and gross margin numbers up, as
well as helped considerably in reducing warehouse, merchandising, and
delivery costs.

Early in my business coaching journey, as an E-Myth Coach, I learned to build better systems. The first step, is to understand/diagnosis how the present system works. Without a baseline/benchmark of how you do it currently (metrics for performance), you can build a new system, however you’ll never know if your new system is better than the previous system.

Where are you today?

Most strategy discussions begin with what are our strengths, weaknesses, where are we today?

If we’re growing at 10%, what can we do to grow at 12%, 15%? If we have an NPS Score of 50, can we increase it to 60? You look at where you can be in the near term.

This leads to incremental thinking. It leads to reasonable, but stretch strategic goals.

This new model, starts with where you are today, then asks you to pop out into the future.

It starts with defining where you are today, and looking ahead to 5 years from now.

What is the undesirable but realistic future if you continue with your current future?

Krippendorff calls this your “MESS.” It’s intended to give you a sense of urgency. To make you want something different!

Then, step out into the future again, five years. What are the trends, the environment five years from now. What should you be thinking about?

What’s going on with social-economic trends, competition, regulation, new technologies?

Envision what the future context is of all these trends.

Still standing within that 5 year time frame, ask yourself: What do I want to achieve in five years? What’s my ideal future for our company? What impact do you want to have on the world? What do you want people to be saying about your business?

It might sound like this, “We are the number one provider of X, or we’re transforming people’s lives by…”

It should be something aspirational, INSPIRING!

Then, move from this future to your near term future. Ask yourself the question, in order to achieve this future aspiration, ASK, “What must be true in the near term (12-18 months), to be sure, without a doubt, we are on the path to achieving our long-term idea?”

This is a much different question than you would under normal strategic planning.

This leads to a strategic question.

Einstein said, “If I had 60 minutes to solve a problem, and my life depended upon the answer, I’d spend 55 minutes deciding what question to ask. Because when I have the right question, I can solve it in 5 minutes.”

Take your near term ideal, rephrase it as a question.

It might sound like, “How do I double our revenue, double customer satisfaction in the next 18 months?”

With the right strategic question, you’re going to be able to generate ideas to answer this question.

Here are the five steps to follow:

Identify the “mess,” the undesirable but realistic result of you continuing on your current path.

List the key trends that will shape the long-term future.

Envision the long-term ideal outcome you want.

What must be true in the near-term for you to be confident you are on the path?

I’m in St. Louis Sunday, excited to learn more from Krippendorff at our Coaches Summit, and then from the speakers featured at Scale Up Summit 2017. I’ll be sharing reports on what I learned, next blog.